Dry grass crackled around my legs. Needled seeds attached themselves to my socks and tried to bury their heads in the skin of my ankles.

Ahead of me, Rocco Gioia stopped. The impala ram we were stalking bounded away between the thorn trees.

A wait-a-minute bush snagged at my hair as we walked on. In Africa, everything has either thorns or teeth.

The gargling wheeze of impala rams rutting told us a small bachelor herd was just ahead. We stepped out of the thorn trees, then quickly knelt in the tawny grass. Eighty yards away a ram tried his best to stare us down. He faced us straight on, blowing at us like a big old whitetail doe does after a hunter has busted her from her bed.

"Shoot him if you can," Rocco whispered. I shouldered the rifle. I was breathing hard from the fast walk, and the crosshairs jerked and twitched instead of settling on the impala's shoulder. If I shot I risked missing, or worse, wounding the ram.

After a long moment I lowered the gun. We traded stares with the ram until he bounded away, a red-gold wraith vanishing among the thorn trees.

MY AFRICAN ODYSSEY BEGAN as a line of blue letters glowing on my computer screen.

"Would you like to go to Africa and go hunting?" The message was from a friend, Galen Geer, whom I knew had just returned from South Africa. He explained that Rocco Gioia, the owner of Caskett's Ranch, wanted a woman writer to come and hunt with him.

"When do we leave?" I typed back.

The conversation turned to guns. Galen said I would need a larger caliber rifle than anything I'd ever shot; he suggested a .375 H&H Magnum.

The prospect of shooting such a big-bore gun intimidated me; I've never liked even a .30-06. Then Galen said, "Have some supervision the first time you shoot it. I don't want you getting hurt."

I decided supervision wasn't all I'd need. I ordered a PAST shooting shirt, as well as the company's Heraean Shield, a pad that attaches to a bra strap. If one was good, I reasoned, both would be better.

The rifle I chose was a U.S. Repeating Arms Model 70 with a synthetic stock and a matte-black barrel. It was a beautiful weapon--and it scared me half to death.

I also wanted to experiment with some different loads. Last year I took a borrowed .30-06 on an elk hunt. It was a nice gun, but I had trouble finding a load that would perform consistently in it. That was a problem I didn't want to have in Africa. I got two boxes of Winchester ammunition, one of 270-grain bullets and one of 300-grain, as well as a box of Federal 300s.

Finally I gathered gun, ammunition and courage and went to see John Underwood, my gunsmith. He drove with me to the range where he made some adjustments to my shooting stance, and told me to be sure to pull the stock in tight against my shoulder and lean into the gun.

"OK," he said. "Shoot."

I got a death-grip on the gun, took a deep breath and let it out, set the iron sights on a plastic milk jug on the berm 100 yards away, and pulled the trigger.

Even with two PAST pads, the recoil was terrific. It wasn't sharp like that from a .270 or a .30-06, though; it was more like the hard push of a shotgun.

John laughed. "That knocked you back about two feet," he said.

After a half-dozen rounds my shoulder ached, and the rifle barrel was too hot to touch. The .375 H&H Magnum definitely is not a target gun.

"Time to quit," John said. "You can handle the gun all right. Now you need to get the scope on it."

We fitted the rifle with a Bushnell 2 1/2 to 10 scope. One of the things I liked about the particular riflescope was the rubber ring on the eyepiece; if I hit myself in the face with it, at least I wouldn't get cut.

TWO WEEKS LATER I WENT BACK to the range, this time alone. I fidgeted around for at least 20 minutes before I finally made myself shoot. The gun still pounded my shoulder, but the scope didn't hit me in the face.

During the next six weeks, I gradually sighted in the gun. I could only shoot about 10 rounds at a time before my shoulder started to hurt and I began flinching. But over time I was able to compare the three loads. At 100 yards I was lucky to put the 300-grain Winchesters within four inches of each other. Both the 270-grain Winchesters and the Federals gave me good prints, however; the Winchesters produced a group about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, the Federals about one inch. I decided to take the Federals, with half a box of the Winchester 270s for backup.

Before I left, my friends expressed concern about the political situation in South Africa. I admit that I was nervous, too, especially when Chris Hani was assassinated three days before I was to leave.

But the reality of South Africa is quite different from what our media portray. True, Johannesburg was a little tense. But once we left the city everyone was relaxed. American news reports to the contrary, South Africa was not in flames.

One thing became clear almost immediately: South African women do not hunt. Quite a few men, when they learned why I was in the country, looked at me as if I were from another planet. They simply could not grasp the idea that a women would choose to go into the bush and hunt.

This attitude is not universal, however. Men whose business is hunting are accustomed to having woman clients. Both Rocco Gioia and Andrew Hogg, the Professional Hunter working for him, accepted me without comment and provided me with an excellent hunt.

CASKETT'S RANCH IS A MICROCOSM of the Eastern Transvaal. On the edge of Kruger National Park, it comprises habitats from river swamps to dry uplands. In front of the main lodge, impala browse on a open plain; a few hundred meters downslope, hippos grumble in the river.

Hunting in South Africa is surprisingly similar to that in the U.S., with some interesting variations. Here, I've spent a lot of time sitting in blinds over food plots. There, the blinds are called "hides," and they're over waterholes.

Much hunting is done on foot. We would drive to an area where Rocco knew impala or wildebeest were likely to be, park the bakkie (South African for pickup truck), and walk in big circle, quartering into the wind.

Odor is a large part of an African hunt. On one of our walks we knew both zebra and wildebeest were ahead of us; we smelled them. Their odors hovered on the edge of familiarity. A zebra smells like a horse--almost. And a wildebeest smells very much like a cow.

As we walked, a wildebeest blew at us. It was a hoarse "whuff!" much deeper than the snort of a whitetail. Seconds later a herd of wildebeest thundered away, streaming past us with their tails flying.

We turned and walked after them, moving quickly and quietly into the wind. For a hundred meters or so, we didn't see them. Then over Rocco's shoulder I saw one slight movement in the thorn trees ahead. I said "Pssst!" and at the same moment my eye sorted the jumble of stems and twigs into a huge wildebeest bull. He wheeled and galloped away, followed by the entire herd, and then by half a dozen zebras. They had all been standing in our full view. Such is hunting in the bush: you can look right at an animal and not see it.

We sat down and waited for 10 minutes or so. Then we began walking again, very slowly. We would take a few steps and squat down to look for legs, a tail, any part of an animal. Even so, we were almost on the herd before we saw it.

The big herd bull and some of the cows milled around; I had no decent shot at all. Then Rocco grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to the left.

"There's another bull staring at you," he whispered. "Shoot it!"

I swung the gun up, pulled it into my shoulder, and brought the barrel down until the crosshairs settled onto the bull's chest. I was concentrating so hard that I didn't hear the shot, or feel the recoil. But I was on my knees, and physics can't be denied: I landed on my backside.

Several days later, Rocco and I stalked another nice impala ram. This time I wasn't blown from a hard walk, and took him without difficulty.

It was the perfect ending for an African hunt.

Sidebar: Getting There

Round trip coach fares range from $1,400 to $1,800. But expect first-class treatment even in the coach section. In-flight movies, gourmet meals, and excellent South African wines help the 15-hour flight pass easily.

Nor is taking guns into South Africa a problem. Officials are are accustomed to having foreigners visit their country to hunt, and entry with firearms is simple and expedient.

For more information about dates, fees and travel arrangements, contact African Safaris, P. O. Box 808, Canon City, CO 81215.