There are some significant differences between the early and the initial. Issues aside, he doesn't necessarily want to build that particular tank - he wants a winter camouflaged late with no zimmerit. Which I doubt exists...
In my previous post I was thinking of Gruppe Fehrmann. They commandeered five Tiger I's from an armor training school in January 1945 and fought until the last Tiger was destroyed in April. This was quite the mix of tiger parts - un-zimmed lates with early turrets. Don't know if you have an early turret though to use with the late hull. IF you did, you could model a hypothetical winter-camo version - the only photos are ones taken by the British when they destroyed the Tigers in April.
It seems that there are dozens of choices from early and mid Tigers in winter camo, but next to nothing as far as late models, especially if you want something without zimmerit.
Seems the most common variant with winter camo is the early mid, which essentially has all the features of the mid Tiger except that it retains the fold-up cupola. The only kit that can be used to model this variant is the CH Michael Wittmann Tiger, which is OOP and can only be gotten on eBay at $200 or more.
I'd go with a later mid, the one represented in the widely available Taimya kit.