From my personal limited experience, no wrap on the bases worked better. I only did 3 so far though.
The main thing, in my experience, is to keep it out of the sun. The sun will do way more discolouration than water will and it will do it quickly. So either keep it in a shadow, or better yet through some garbage bags on those antlers. Since you are doing it in the winter using an accelerated method, it may be not such a big deal though. I would take a precaution and cover them with garbage bags anyway. I messed up one head pretty badly not thinking ahead. Well, it is not really messed up, but the antlers had some very nice and very rich walnut colour from bases to tips and it gave a lot of character to the deer. Now they are just a set of pale/white fairly large set of antlers with not much going for them (in my opinion, though many disagree). All I can say is that I was very disappointed with myself when all was done with. Lesson learned though.
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