Thanks everyone for the replies. We have never used fert on any of our oat food plots in the past and they have turned out well. They were limed though so maybe that was the difference. The main reason we arent planning on liming when planting is time. We have 20 some treestands to prune, trails to brush hog, several new stands to hang and try to get these plots in and including drive time there and back in a day.
Plus we are only doing about half of the area this year that we want to do next year. So Were thinking just rip the ground up next spring and lime the whole area then and should be good to go by next fall.