From consulting the book I mentioned earlier, all it takes to start the project with a frozen hide is to thaw it out, soak it in warm water for 24hrs to re-hydrate, then start scraping out the flesh side. What you do next depends on whether you want full-on buckskin or hair-on.
It'd be less work, sounds like to me, to go hair-on... only have to do all that scraping on one side.