(FORTUNE Magazine) – On any given morning, Wall Street executives pick up shotguns instead of briefcases and head for the wilds of Dutchess County, New York, to shoot clay targets that simulate the different flight patterns of ring-necked pheasants, ruffed grouse, and other birds in a game called sporting clays. Popular with Britain's huntin' and shootin' set for the past 60 years, sporting clays today ranks with golf as a favored British pastime. Now it is catching on in the U.S. It has picked up perhaps as many as 50,000 enthusiasts, including Winslow Tuttle, a senior managing director at Bear Stearns. Another fan is Barron Hilton, chairman of Hilton Hotels. He has a private course on his Nevada ranch. Over 100 hunting clubs around the U.S. have rushed to open sporting-clay courses. The sport is different from trap and skeet shooting: Rather than wait in one spot for their targets to be fired into the air, hunters trek through woods or fields to different shooting spots. The targets, released by hidden machines, take off in far less predictable patterns, sometimes at knee height or ground level. ''It's becoming the 'in' thing,'' claims Walter Neff, vice president of sales at Kidder Peabody, who just returned from an African hunting safari. Hunters like Neff enjoy sporting clays because they get an opportunity to practice in the off-season. Says Bob Davis, chairman of Houston's Dove Oil & Gas: ''This is a thinking man's sport.'' Others enjoy it because it's challenging, bloodless, and an enjoyable way to entertain clients. C.G.