Due to the nonlinear current-voltage (I-V) relationship of the photovoltaic (PV) module, building a precise mathematical model of the PV module is necessary for evaluating and optimizing the PV systems. This paper proposes a method of building PV parameter estimation models based on golden jackal optimization (GJO). GJO is a recently developed algorithm inspired by the idea of the hunting behavior of golden jackals. The explored and exploited searching strategies of GJO are built based on searching for prey as well as harassing and grabbing prey of golden jackals. The performance of GJO is considered on the commercial KC200GT module under various levels of irradiance and temperature. Its performance is compared to well-known particle swarm optimization (PSO), recent Henry gas solubility optimization (HGSO) and some previous methods. The obtained results show that GJO can estimate unknown PV parameters with high precision. Furthermore, GJO can also provide better efficiency than PSO and HGSO in terms of statistical results over several runs. Thus, GJO can be a reliable algorithm for the PV parameter estimation problem under different environmental conditions.