I moved to Southern Vermont in 2019. Here's my take as a queer but not 'traditionally gay' man while here the last four years:

If there are such things as gayborhoods, they are older gay and lesbian couples that came out or settled here two or three decades ago. The younger, more varied queer folk are spread more thin and those native to Vermont seem to want to leave as quickly as they can for places with larger and more.doverse queer communities.

Personally the communities I connect with now are located in Albany, NY and Springfield and Boston, Mass. So it's not really local at all. Living in Burlington would be different but even then the community there is smaller than the three I listed in larger cities further south.

On the other topic, I come from a family of outdoors people from the Midwest, so I too am a gun owner. Vermont is fairly straight forward, what you have to watch out for is the neighboring states, some are VERY strict. Without knowing any better I stopped in a Cabela's in Mass on my way home from Boston thinking I'd pick up some rimfire rounds and when I tried to check out without a Mass license or whatever you'd have thought by their reaction that I was a terrorist trying to buy bombmaking materials.