Hi KSprairie,
For squirrels I trap them at the house. I run a Tomahawk skunk trap all year long. It’s essentially the same thing as a Havahart trap, but much better, imo. I bait it with acorns and keep the squirrels thinned out, otherwise I wouldn’t get any fruits at the house. People dump squirrels out here, so it’s a constant battle, but consistent trapping keeps them at bay.
I also trap coons/possums at the house. People dump those out here too. We are just far enough from the city, where the rural area starts that it’s convenient for people to dump their wildlife out here. Coons are coy and don’t readily want to enter a live trap once they’ve been trapped. So I have to use some dog proof leg hold traps for those. Possums are dumb and will wander in a live trap, no matter how many times they’ve been trapped.
For the larger orchard, it’s more out in the country, so we don’t get squirrels. There are very few large trees in the orchard, so that also helps.
We do get lots of coons and possums (again people dump them out there, and a coon can easily travel 5 miles looking for a new home with a food supply).
For the large orchard, I use a combination of an electric fence and a horse fence. I didn’t want to keep the electric fence close to the ground because of all the weed eating required, so I used a 2"x4"x30" tall horse fence, then ran an electric fence wire at the top of that. It completely stops the coons. The possums are lazier and instead of climbing will sometimes dig underneath the fence. They don’t wreck quite as much as coons. For any possums which dig under, I still put out a live trap or two. Here’s a link where I discussed it extensively with lots of pictures:
If you decide to go with an electric fence, I wouldn’t worry about setting up some type of pinball fence. That’s overkill. A coon which gets zapped good, won’t challenge the fence again. It doesn’t take repeated zaps to teach a coon, unless it’s a really weak charger. If you can afford it, go overkill on the charger. That way, if you have weeds touching the fence, the charger will power through them and still deliver a good shock.
Kencove may have good electric fence supplies, but their regular fencing sucks. They have some problem with their galvanizing. I ended up buying my galvanized electric fence wire from Orscheln. It seems like pretty decent wire. I like the heavy stuff (12.5 gauge).