200 Acre Security

There's a lot of people with opinions on perimeter security who clearly did not own any rural land in the PNW.

Motion sensors are basically useless. For 200 acres, you're gonna be getting constant alerts all night as deer, bears, and other critters wander around. In forested areas, if you have 200 acres and want sensors along the perimeter, there will always be at least one location on any given day where some vegetation is obstructing the sensor or triggering it...

You can get away with 2-3 sensors on the driveway or other maintained paths in the immediate vicinity of the house, but you're still gonna get deer wake-up calls several times a month.

Fences are fairly expensive and require regular maintenance, and in the end, a basic wire fence mostly keeps hikers and cattle out (deer are gonna just hop over it, they jump amazingly well).

Gates do work to keep out car traffic, but again, you're mostly deterring confused tourists. A person who cased your property and wants to steal your stuff will bring bolt cutters. Also, if you keep the gate locked, you're also keeping UPS and FedEx out (although if you're someplace very rural, maybe they don't deliver there).

"Prickly bushes" or something like that - again, good luck doing it along the perimeter of a 200-acre property...

The most realistic approach is probably to give up on the outer perimeter and build some sort of a defensible zone within 50-100 yards of your property. Good line of sight, driveway sensor, some landscaping.

The best defense in rural places, though, is just that people don't know you're there. Are you visible from any major roads? Can you change that? Your neighbors are probably not gonna raid you...

/r/preppers Thread