Name/Title
Kevin RouseEntry/Object ID
CTC001B00012Description
Kevin “Redbone” Rouse (so nicknamed as he has red hair and a love for air-operated wing bone calls) is 53 years old as of March 2026. He has been married for 28 years to his beautiful bride, Carol, and they have two children, Blaine and Brianna.
Rouse has 30 years at the telephone company, starting with Bell South, and now, after an acquisition, he is a fiber technician for AT&T.
He has been making wingbones on the side for well over 25 years, and became interested in wingbones after reading an article in a magazine about how to make wingbones. After he had taken his first turkey, he saved those bones and made a rough set…meaning the bones had grease stains from residual material that wasn’t removed. But they were clean and Rouse put a leather strap wrap on them. He started saving all the bones he could get, including having friends save their bones as well. He went several years and only occasionally made one for a co-worker if they were lucky enough to take a bird. This was probably around 1997-1998.
Rouse had always been a big deer hunter, and in 1990, in his junior year of high school, a schoolmate had a diaphragm in class, and he would yelp almost every day, and the teacher never knew who it was. Rouse talked with him, and it was then that the desire to get a turkey with an air-operated turkey call was brought to life.
The callmaker currently works out of a small 10x20 shop. He boils bones outside and assembles them inside at 859 Chestnut Grove Cir in Dandridge, TN. He is sure the downwind neighbors, at times, are not happy when bones come out of his freezer!
Rouse made Wingbones for many years, and then Facebook and social media started coming on strong. From there, he started meeting a few guys in the wingbone world. Kevin Lynch and Steve Finney were big influences on his early wraps.
Since his start, he has added cane yelpers, trumpets, tube calls, scratch boxes, and occasional crow and owl calls to his lineup. But his favorite to make is still the wingbone, including the work that goes into making one. From deflecting the feathers to the boiling process, then assembling, sanding, wrapping, and finishing.
Rouse says he has won way more awards than he ever expected, including the Jordan Award, the World Championships, the Great Lakes Open, the Canadian Championships, the Dixie Deer Classic, and the Virginia Call Makers competition. He has also won several medals on the decorative side. He has accumulated over 300 medals over the last few years. He said, “ I never thought an East Tennessee boy who read an article years ago would have made it to this level in a call-making career and as a hobby. “Create Date
March 14, 2026Update Date
March 14, 2026
