Turns out, the only thing Maine Conservation Commissioner Patrick McGowan is guilty of is being Patrick McGowan.

In mid-April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it was investigating McGowan on charges of illegal hunting from his seaplane. Those charges were based on a tale initially told by a former head of the Maine Warden Service, Tom Santa-guida.

Santaguida is not exactly a paragon of virtue: He was forced to resign his position after being caught on his boat with nine short lobsters.

But Santaguida's story, augmented by anonymous accusations carried in e-mails across the state, had McGowan communicating moose sightings from the air to hunters on the ground, which is a violation of federal law.

Illegal hunting from the air is serious business, the kind of charge that could bring down a prominent conservation official.

Given McGowan's ambitious and sometimes abrasive personality, more than a few Mainers were willing to deny him the benefit of the doubt.

The Fish and Wildlife Service's investigation wasn't the only one prompted by Santaguida's charges. It came on the heels of two other investigations by the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The state investigations cleared McGowan of the same charges.

Last week, the feds also cleared McGowan.

"Our agents thoroughly investigated the report of unlawful activity," wrote federal investigators, "reviewing pertinent records and interviewing more than a dozen potential witnesses -- and found no corroborating information that Mr. McGowan violated the Airborne Hunting Act."

So McGowan now bears the distinction of being cleared not once, but three times of the charges.

That should be the charm.

Case closed.