In fact, every major part on the truck, except for the bed, has been replaced, including five radiators and countless headlights. After his 17th deer, Elite Auto Body in Chapel Hill, where he goes after a wreck, gave him a plaque and a $150 gift certificate.
"We've almost hit deer coming out of our driveway," his wife said.
But Clevenger isn't the only one around who's hit a few deer. Not by a long shot. According to the UNC Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC), there are about 15,000 deer accidents in North Carolina every year. Moreover, between 2004 and 2006, deer caused nearly $107 million in property damage.
Half these crashes occur in the months of October, November, and December. It's rutting season, which means bucks are out looking for mates, and as temperatures drop both male and female deer are on the move to find new sources of food.
All of this amounts to more deer crossing more roads at more inopportune moments.
Clevenger has plenty of stories.
"I've hit two at one time," he said. "A deer ran out once, I didn't hit it, but my side-view mirror knocked it in the face. ... I've had deer run out and hit the side of the truck, just brush it, wipe the dirt right off it."
According to Eric Rodgman, a database specialist at the HSRC, the deer accident numbers are rising. While the average is about 15,000 a year, the crash count for 2006 was 17,604.
Kevin Mathews of Elite Auto Body says that his shop usually receives about 60 deer-crash vehicles per season, but this year there have been more.
Drivers should know that deer are nocturnal, and most likely to be crossing roads at dawn and dusk (when they're either going toward or away from a foraging area).
All this might explain why Clevenger, who drives 40 minutes through wooded areas at dawn and dusk, can't seem to turn his ignition key without a deer flying over his hood.
On the other side of the story, there's Kindra Mammone. She runs a deer rehabilitation clinic just outside of Chapel Hill; more specifically, she converted her quaint, one-story home into a deer trauma center.
In her line of work, she gets called to a lot of different types of incidents. Her lighter stories involve problem deer that are munching on rose gardens, people putting socks on deer, and fawns imprinting on human children, following them to bus stops (which happened three times last year at Phillips Middle School).
But the majority of her deer stories aren't so cute.
Many of those deer from highway collisions that aren't killed outright have to be put down. And it's not just cars that give them a hard time. Dogs can be particularly brutal, and sometimes people, with good intentions, take in young or injured deer (actually prohibited by North Carolina law) and give them milk or other foods they can't digest.
Still, auto collisions are the most pressing concern.
Mammone insists that the rise in accidents, and deer-human contact, is not due an increase in the deer population. In fact, according to both Mammone and deer biologist Evan Stanford of the Wildlife Resources Commission, the deer population has remained fairly constant in this area for 20 years, if not more.
The human population, on the other hand, has not.
"Houses spring up and then people wonder why they have deer in their yards" Mammone said. "Well, that deer wasn't given the eviction notice."
Regardless of who's to blame, deer-human contact is high in these months, and it can be a dangerous for both parties.
According to Stanford, there are several possible solutions.
Sport hunting can keep deer numbers down. But, as one can imagine, that typically works better in rural areas than in cities and towns, and hunters prefer bucks, so they're not thinning the deer population so much as making it lopsided.
Trap-and-release is another solution discussed at the state level, but it's expensive per deer, "and where do you put them?" Stanford asked.
Tolerance and caution seem to be more workable solutions at this point, Stanford said.
For yards and private gardens, a variety of nets, fences, sprinklers and scents (including tiger and fox urine) are available to keep deer at bay. It's also possible to distract deer from gardens by planting some of their favorite plants nearby, like clover and grape leaves.
Still, the most urgent concern is driver's safety.
Mammone is adamant that deer safety should be taught in driver's education classes. But it's not.
For now, drivers should follow speed limits, heed deer crossing signs and use high-beams when possible. Deer whistles issue high-pitched sounds intended to scare deer off, but their effectiveness is hotly debated.
Finally, experts say most deer-related injuries and deaths result from motorists swerving off the road to avoid a collision rather than from actually hitting a deer. If a deer bounds in front of you, just make sure you don't make things even worse by losing control of your vehicle.
As for Clevenger, after hitting some two dozen deer, he said, he just braces for the impact.
To see a related story on injured deer click
here.