While the blog has certainly branched out in terms of what it covers, I remain very interested in Israeli guns. One of the interesting parts of covering this subject area is discovering when things you didn’t think existed… actually exist.

In this case, the gun in question is the BUL Cherokee “Mini” Gen 1, which I acquired off a very popular auction site. You’ll recall from previous discussion that there are actually multiple generations of the Cherokee, with the first generation being a fairly straightforward licensed copy of the Tanfoglio Force polymer pistol. What sets apart the Cherokee Mini from the Cherokee and Cherokee Compact is the use of a compact (but not subcompact!) frame.

Read on for some more details.

I’m going to headline this with “there aren’t a lot of surprises”. Taking apart the Cherokee Mini gen 1 reveals a gun that is nearly the same as a Cherokee Compact gen 1. Unlike the gen2 Mini (.380 ACP), the gen1 Mini is 9mm.

The gallery above shows the standard setup – uncaptured recoil guide rod and spring, a standard 3.66″ Tanfoglio barrel, and a svelte slide with fixed sights. Trigger pull weights feels exactly like a normal Cherokee Compact, which is a heavy double-action pull and a not-so-light single-action pull. The import markings on this one are very tastefully done on the barrel, which I kinda like.

The controls are the same, which is also to say, adequate. You can easily one-hand manipulate the safety and slide release/stop, but they’re a bit sharp. The magazine release on my example worked fine. The gun weighs roughly 24oz, which is almost the same as the Compact.

As noted in the intro, the big difference with the Mini is the use of a compact frame to go with its compact slide. Note that I say “compact”, not “subcompact”. This gun is roughly the size of a Glock 19, and you can get a fairly good grip around the frame. The BUL Cherokee Compact is more like what Sig might call a “carry” size – full size frame, shorter slide. Interestingly, the Bul Cherokee Mini frame is nearly exactly the same size as a BUL Impact frame, which might explain why BUL didn’t seem to advertise the Minis so heavily.

Magazine capacity is 13rds. The magazine I got with it is marked as a genuine Tanfoglio, albeit it uses a rather thick plastic baseplate. My other 13rd Tanfo mag with a metal baseplate fit it just fine as well.

Test-firing was uneventful. It has a bit more snap than the Compact, but it’s otherwise pretty much the same experience. I could get my strong hand mostly around the grip, but my pinky definitely needed the magazine pad to have a place to curl around. I put a few mags down range and drilled out the center of a bullseye at 7 yards… that’s about as much as I need from this gun. The sights are better than I remember, which is nice, but the double action trigger isn’t a lot of fun. No failures at all, even across multiple kinds of mags and ammo used, but I wouldn’t read too far into this abbreviated test.

Look, don’t buy one of these for carry. It’s outclassed by any number of popular modern striker-fired compact pistols. Do buy it because it’s a rare collector’s item that was never imported in any serious quantity. I wouldn’t put it up there with some of the true unicorns, but these import lot guns from small-quantity production batches tend to come and go, and then just go. Right now, there’s a fair number of Impacts, Cherokees, and Storms on GB. It may not always be that way.